26 Apr / Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
“In my lifetime, I’ve had at least three mothers,” Grace M. Cho writes. After surviving the Korean War, Cho’s mother worked as a bar girl at a U.S. naval base during the U.S. occupation of South Korea. In 1971, she married Cho’s father, a U.S. merchant mariner 22 years her senior and emigrated to his isolating, predominantly white hometown of Chehalis, Washington. Their tumultuous union engendered two marriages, multiple suicide attempts, and two divorces.
As her first mother during Cho’s childhood, Koonja was a social chameleon, a glamorous hostess who introduced the rural working-class community to Korean food. By the time Cho was 15, Koonja was hearing voices as an as-yet-undiagnosed schizophrenic who would devolve into a total shut-in. Her third mother emerged during Cho’s thirties, one who cautiously shared fragments from her past, especially through precious, memory-inducing foods, until she died unexpectedly in 2008.
Since then, Cho has been writing this book as “equal parts therapy and eulogy” as she laid bare her achingly symbiotic relationship with her enigmatic mother. Nearly two decades since Koonja’s mysterious death, Cho “write[s] her back into existence, to let her legacy live on the page, and in so doing, trace [Cho’s] own.” The spectacular result is both an exquisite commemoration and a potent reclamation.
Review: “Fiction,” Booklist, April 1, 2021
Readers: Adult
Published: 2021
I question Grace H. Cho controversial statistic. I know she is part of the feministPRESS, someone who had a troubled marriage family. My question how she came up with the million Korean women statistic. Official Korean government statistic source give a estimated number 26,000 to 39,000 Korean prostitutes served American soldiers but Grace.H.Cho claimed over a million in her book.
Here is the Korean sources from wikipedia. It was from Korean government and newspaper.
” According to statistics from the Korean government, the total number of prostitutes in South Korean was 17,349 in 1953.[53] According to the research on the number of checkup for Venereal diseases by professor Lee Young-hoon an economic professor at Seoul National University, the number of prostitutes in the South Korea from 1953 to 1969 was between 26,000 and 39,000.[54] Surveys carried out the 1950s and 1960s suggest 60% of these prostitutes worked near U.S. military camps,[47][48][49][50][51] but even though prostitutes work near U.S. military camps, many of them served only Korean men.[55] A 1984 report suggested that the number of prostitutes around US bases had dropped to less than a third of the total number of prostitutes in the country.[56] ”
In 1954, Korean government(보건사회복지부) figures give 10,000-30,000 prostitutes servicing the U.N/U.S. military in the South Korea,[57] about 20,000 prostitutes in 1966,[58] reducing to 13,000-14,000 in 1969.[59] reducing to 9,935 in 1977.[60]
You are very perceptive. Grace’s second “memoir’ Tastes Like War is also a work of fiction. Please see her brother Neville’s review on goodreads. Thank you.
Unfortunately this “memoir” is considered a work of fiction by Grace’s mother’s family. Many “facts” – for example, that her father was in the military, that her family were the only three Koreans in Chehalis, that the town of Chehalis hadn’t seen an immigrant in “decades” – are pure fiction. The book is ableist. Grace’s mom begged her not to use her as a research subject or to ever write publicly about her. Grace’s mother’s life and mental condition was never as described by Grace. Grace was a bit part player in her mother’s care, and refused to help the family in that career even when begged.
I could go on and on, because I am her sister-in-law, I cared for my MIL for over a decade and I gave up my own PhD studies and career to do what Grace refused to do.
That the Feminist Press published a book that is so startling anti-feminist and ableist astounds many readers.
Please see Grace’s brother’s review on goodreads.
thanks